Gunman Shoots, Kills Coworker Inside Hospital, Then Wounds 2 Police Officers
Philadelphia PA Oct 4 2021 An employee at Jefferson Hospital shot and killed a coworker inside the Center City Philadelphia hospital early Monday, police said. After the gunman fled, the suspect shot and wounded two Philadelphia Police officers.
The Jefferson shooting was the second deadly shooting in a workplace in Philadelphia since Friday, when a security guard was shot and killed inside an office building in Logan.
Police said the employee who was killed was a 43-year-old certified nursing assistant at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, though they didn’t release the victim’s name.
“We do believe that the other employee was targeted,” Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference, “the reasons why, at this point, we still don’t know and are unclear.”
The suspect, who also worked at Jefferson, was wearing scrubs when he shot the victim just after midnight, Outlaw said. He fled the hospital in a U-Haul truck.
About an hour later, police were flagged down by a passerby in West Philadelphia’s Parkside neighborhood, near the School of the Future on the edge of Fairmount Park. There, they found a man in scrubs with a gun, Outlaw said.
Police officers confronted the suspect and he fired, shooting two officers. Four of the officers fired back. The man was wearing body armor, but was shot in the upper body and neck, police said.
He was armed with a long gun and a handgun, Outlaw said.
One officer was shot in the elbow and will need surgery, but is expected to recover. The other officer was shot in the nose and is in stable condition, also expected to recover.
The shooter, who is 55, was listed in critical condition, but is expected to survive. Police did not release the names of the victims and suspect.
Police found the U-Haul was also seen about a block or two away from at the scene of the second shooting, and they found blue hospital scrubs, reported NBC10’s Randy Gyllenhaal. SWAT officers remained at that scene for hours Monday morning.
Police said they don’t know more about the motive for the shooting yet, or if there had been earlier threats of violence.
But the second workplace shooting in such a short time alarmed Outlaw, who reflected on that at the news conference.
“What can I say, about this happening in such a short proximity of time?” Outlaw said. “The good news is we have both suspects in custody. When you think about this, this is something you typically would see in a movie or a TV series. … hopefully, because we do have the people responsible in custody, it nips anything that would have been planned for the future in the bud.”
“Active shooter situations are typically incidents that happen far and few in between … it’s not supposed to happen this close together, but we are all prepared to respond quickly and deal with it, and that’s what we will continue to do,” Outlaw said.
She also said officers are working around the clock to investigate the city’s homicides, which now total at least 418 for the year, an 18% increase over last year, which was already one of the deadliest on record.
“Obviously the numbers are staggering, it’s heartbreaking in a lot of cases,” she said. “There are a lot of juveniles involved, but it’s not going to stop us from doing what we all signed up to do.”
